


Making Time for Something Real

by greyvvardenfell



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sharing a Bed, may or may not be canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-20 02:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12423276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell
Summary: Waking up the night after sharing a bed in Mazelinka's house, Apprentice Otheron and Julian discuss their future together.





	Making Time for Something Real

A pale slash of sun filtered past the partition into the bedroom they’d stolen from Mazelinka, painting a blaze across Otheron’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from it to bury himself in the crook of Julian’s arm as if they’d spent every night together instead of just one. The sheet had long been tangled up and discarded onto the floor, along with most of their clothing, but the bed was still comfortably warm despite the morning chill that crept in with the sunlight.

“Otheron?” He felt Julian’s arm tighten around his shoulders, pulling him closer with a contented sigh. The doctor’s voice rumbled pleasantly through his chest. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Sleepy golden eyes peered through a tangle of long, tightly-curled brown hair, stark against Otheron’s dark skin. “No, the sun did. How long have you been up?”

Julian met his gaze and drew his fingers across the apprentice’s forehead, pushing his hair back. He shrugged. “Sleep and I tend not to get along, even at the best of times. And I never did get that soup.” A smirk lifted Julian’s lips. “Not that I’m complaining about what I got instead.”

“I should hope not,” Otheron said with a chuckle before lifting his hand to skate it slowly across Julian’s pale skin, swirling through the fine red hair dusted over his pectorals and tracing down the lines of his ribs. The doctor followed his progress with avid interest, eye trained on every motion of his fingers as heat rose high across his cheekbones.

“Y-you, ah—” Julian cut himself off, clearing his throat.

“Mmm?”

“When do you need to be back?” he tried again, forcing his attention away from Otheron’s wanderings as they drew ever lower. “To the palace, I mean.”

Otheron soured and swore, pushing himself up on one arm and pulling the other away from the waistband of Julian’s trousers. “Ugh, you’re right. Soon. Nadia will send out the guards if Portia can’t find me, and I don’t want them to come looking for you, especially not…” He leaned towards Julian’s flushed face, capturing his gaze. “Not now that I know what we could be.” Otheron pressed a hot kiss to Julian’s lips, satisfied to see his eye flutter closed and feel his tongue seek his in response.

Julian sighed when they broke apart, blinking dazedly as he cradled Otheron’s face in his hands before his expression turned inward, deep and unreadable.

“When can I see you again?”

The doctor bit his lip and didn’t answer.

“Julian,” Otheron said, his tone darkening. “Don’t. I will see you again. Even if you try to hide from me, or avoid me, it won’t work. I may not know as much about evading people as you, but there’s… there’s too much between us to let this go.”

“You think you know less about this than me?” Julian laughed harshly. “We’ve somehow run into each other every day for the past three days, sometimes more than once. That’s not a coincidence.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Julian sat back against the wall and ran one hand down his face. “I know,” he said simply. “And I don’t want this to end. How could I, when you’re… you? But it would be so much better for you, so much safer—”

“Safety is overrated.”

“Otheron—”

“I’m not leaving you, Julian. I know we just met and this might get messy and all that, but look.” Otheron pulled Julian’s hands into his lap and meshed their fingers together, alternating stripes of pale skin and dark. “Everything I’ve learned about, well, everything, has taught me to trust my intuition. The reason I ended up at the Rowdy Raven that night was because I was following my gut, even though it seemed like a stupid thing to do. Same with leaving the palace yesterday and ending up on the aqueduct. And every time it’s led me to you. Like you said, that can’t be coincidence.”

Julian didn’t respond, his gray eye flitting quickly between Otheron’s golden ones, unable to settle.

“I want to try to make this work, whatever ‘this’ turns out to be. There’s something about you… don’t you feel it too?”

“Of course I do,” Julian said without hesitation, his deep voice more fragile than Otheron had ever heard it before.

“Then can’t we just try it? Please? Let me go back to the palace today. I’ll make up some story about being out for an early walk, checking on the shop or something. Maybe I had a dream it got broken into, again, and I needed to see for myself that it didn’t.” Otheron smiled slyly. “Nadia trusts me. She won’t suspect me unless I give her a reason to, and I won’t.”

“Even as you consort with the man who murdered her husband?”

Otheron’s grin disappeared as quickly as it emerged. “You said yourself even you don’t know if you killed him. Damn it, I’m not going to condemn you without doing everything I possibly can to prove your innocence.” He reached out to tuck a strand of thick red hair behind Julian’s ear, lingering on the line of his clenched jaw. “And even if you did kill Count Lucio,” he added quietly. “Maybe he deserved it.”

Julian stared at him, eye wide. Otheron stared back with his head cocked to the side until the slam of a door startled them both. Julian made to wrap his arms around Otheron protectively before he realized that the noise was just Mazelinka, emerging from the hiding hole for the morning. Slowly, he let out his breath through his nose, decision made. “Can you sneak out again tonight?”

Otheron shifted to his knees and threw one leg over Julian’s hips, his smile renewed as he tilted the doctor’s chin up to his face. “I can and I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Fictober prompt, "You know even less about this than me?"


End file.
